Purposeful Action The term sovereignty does not contain the idea of purposeful action, but the term providence does. Sovereignty focuses on God’s right and power to do all that he wills, but in itself, it does not express any design or goal. Of course, God’s...
An Invitation Jesus said to look at the birds because God feeds them (Matt. 6:26) and to consider the lilies because God clothes them (Matt. 6:28–30). Jesus’s aim was not aesthetic. His aim was to free his people from anxiety. He really considered it a valid argument...
On September 4, 1869, when he was thirty-seven years old, Hudson Taylor found a letter waiting for him at Zhenjiang from John McCarthy. God used the letter to revolutionize Taylor’s life. “When my agony of soul was at its height, a sentence in a letter from dear...
The Lessons of Suffering John Bunyan’s sufferings strengthened his assurance that God is sovereign over all the afflictions of his people and will bring them safely home. There have always been, as there are today, people who try to solve the problem of suffering by...
Marriage for God’s Glory The ultimate thing to see in the Bible about marriage is that it exists for God’s glory. Most foundationally, marriage is the doing of God. Most ultimately, marriage is the display of God. It is designed by God to display his glory in a way...
Acts 3:24, "All the prophets who have spoken, from Samuel and those who came after him, also proclaimed these days." The Long-Awaited Messiah We often think of prophecy as relating to what is yet future or to what is now beginning to happen in the world. And we easily...
God Become Man I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh. (John 6:51) There is no traditional Christmas story about the birth of Jesus in...
The Coming of Christ Even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. (Mark 10:45) Christmas is about the coming of Christ into the world. It’s about the Son of God, who existed eternally with the Father as “the...
Beauty of Corporate Worship It is beautifully fitting that Christian people gather for corporate worship every week. When they do, they give united expression to their truth-rooted knowledge of the triune God and their treasure-rooted affections for all God is for...
The idea of revival originates in the reality that, on the one hand, God is the decisive giver of all spiritual life and, on the other hand, humans, even those who are born again and part of God’s covenant family, from time to time drift into a kind of...
The impetus for this article comes from the ultimate reality of God as the supreme value in and above the universe. God is absolute and eternal and infinite. Everything else and everybody else is dependent and finite and contingent. God Himself is the...
Satan is real. His main identity is “a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44). His way of lying is more by deception than bold-face falsehoods. He “is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world” (Rev. 12:9). Therefore, he hates “the Spirit of truth”...
An Author's Signature Some authors leave marks of their authorship that have nothing to do with the point of their book. That seems to be the case, for example, with the letters of the apostle Paul. He wrote, “I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand. This is the...
You Can Be an Expert Bible Reader, and Not Really Read the Bible Probably in Jesus’s day, no one read the Bible more than the scribes and Pharisees. Jesus said, “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat, so do and observe whatever they tell you, but not the...